Introduction 

This is not a new technique by any means, but as it’s last mention in a TamiyaBase article was in Rick vS’s excellent “Rust and fading paint, the hairspray method” (https://tamiyabase.com/articles/54-painting/175-rust-and-fading-paint-the-hairspray-method) back in 2015, I thought it couldn’t hurt to bring it to the front again.

Here I’ve only used acrylic paints – Hycote aerosols & airbrushed Tamiya XF- paints (Halfords acrylics appear to be compatible in my experience) to simulate iron oxide (rust) on painted steel (actually styrene sheet & form), but there’s no reason you can’t “rust” a polycarbonate body (even painting from the inside – just apply minimal rust colour, and really think about the order you’re doing things in), oxidise parts where the 1:1 items would be aluminium (Land Rover body panels etc – I think a little Tamiya X-22 White and a lot of X-21 Flat Base are the way to go), or even use only Tamiya TS-nn aerosols.

 

Rusting

Having followed your usual cleaning/sanding/priming routine, you need to apply the “rust” layer.

In my case, after building a number of small barrels, I sanded them, attached them to holders, cleaned them, then sprayed then with Hycote Grey Plastic Primer. For a metallic base colour, I used Hycote Aluminium Coat (it’s a cheap way of getting a generic silver colour).

I used Hycote Red Primer as my basic shade of rust, but as using only one “rust” colour can make the result look a bit samey, I mixed my own “Old Rust” shade by lightening XF-9 Hull Red and airbrushed a very rough and incomplete coat on. Depending on how rusty you want the result to be, adding more colours for greater variation -  like mixing 50% X-6 Orange & 50% X-21 Flat Base to give Matt Orange – could be a good idea.

 

jr rust 001 base

     

Wetting

Once the rust colours had cured, I used a cheap houseplant spray bottle with a drop of Fairy dishwashing liquid to wet the barrels. I’d previously graded them from 2 to 6 depending on how well I’d made them, I wanted the worst ones to be super crusty so gave them a good squirt. The nicest examples got very little water on them – I misted the air and gently wafted the parts through it instead.

     

Salting

I’ve used fancy sea salt – fresh out of the tub, or partially ground in a mortar & pestle – in the past, but here I used ordinary (well, Waitrose ;) ) table salt. As with the water, the more you put on, the “worse” the results. If you want something really rusty, just pour it one straight out of the dispenser – use smallest hole/pattern on the dispenser though. For a lighter effect, light flicks from a salt cellar will put enough on.

 

jr rust 002 salt

 

Drying

Leave your part(s) for long enough for the water to dry – this will depend on temperature & humidity, but a couple of hours indoors on an average day ought to do it. Don’t leave it too long, especially overnight if the temperature is likely to drop.

Once dry, if you think you’ve used too much salt you can brush some off.

 

Painting

Spraying the colour coat here is no different to painting anything else with an aerosol – with the exception that you don’t really want to put on any more than the bare minimum needed to cover the “rust” – you don’t want to encapsulate the salt to the extent that you can’t get it off without serious sanding.

You may want to put a tray under your bits as salt will absorb moisture from the atmosphere. - almost any time in a UK winter they’ll get wet enough to drip, given enough time.

 

jr rust 003 colour

 

De-Salting

Once your colour coat is cured, you can get your parts straight under the tap & start scrubbing with a stiff toothbrush or green scourer -  but I’ve found it better to just knock the worst of the salt off (or the tops of the peaks over the salt) then leave the parts for another day or two to take advantage of the hygroscopic (moisture absorbing) nature of salt to make things a bit easier.

 

 jr rust 004 process light  jr rust 005 process heavy

    

Further Finishing

I did some extra work to the barrels before calling them done:

* M3 grub screws added to fill the holes & act as a stopper;

* Dry brushing & stippling with rust & Matt Orange (more on the “worst” barrels);

* Repainting the tops of the “better” barrels;

* Wash of XF-50 Field Blue to highlight the chines;

* Added various oil sponsor decals from my spares pile.

I “aged” the decals (repros from MCI Racing and Screenprintdigital, but original Tamiya ones, vintage and new are produced in the same manner – pigments, including white printed on the outside of clear self adhesive film) by increasing, careful use of fine grit wet & dry paper & soapy water from “best” to “worst”.

jr rust 006a finished

 

 

To finish, a couple of additional examples of the technique:

* modified (static model) Sand Scorcher 2010 shows salt rusting around the edges, deliberate wearing of the paint through to the red oxide primer underneath, and faded/worn decals;

* imagined 1923 backwoods halftrack shows sanded through topcoat & use of coarse sea salt.

 

jr rust 006 scrap scorcher jr rust 007 23 skidoo 

  jr rust 006 scrap scorcher

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Written by TB member Jonny Retro

 

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